Siemens S65

I have owned this phone for about 8 months now. I love the design and color (black/silver). The build of the phone seems to be quite strong, does not make noises even when held firmly. However, there is a gap between the top and bottom plate, surprisingly there is no dust trapped on the screen yet and I do not use any pouch, just carry the phone in my pocket. Screen is rather large, with sharp colors and images and adjustable brightness. Has a large screen, but this means a larger sized phone in general and lower battery life. Screen is quite scratch resistant and there are no significant scratches on the phone after 8 months of everyday use and as I said there is no protection on the screen. Bottoms are well lit with great visibility under any light conditions. Bottoms can be set for fast access of different functions or settings. There is easy access to everything through the well organized phone menu - this is my personal opinion, some people say they have a hard time using a Siemens because of its organization. I have been using Siemens phones for a few years now and got used to their layout. The joystick is another great feature for easier use of the phone and for those who like to play games. The way the joystick and camera are built in is well done from a design point of view, however it isn't too practical as both collect dust which is difficult to remove. This phone comes with approximately 10MB built in memory which is useful with the 1.3MP camera. On the bottom of the phone there is also a slot for a memory card in case the 10MB is not enough and you want to expand it. The phone comes with both an IR port and Bluetooth. I have used BT only for data transfers therefore have no idea how well it performs with headset. To my surprise this phone does not play MP3 files, which I consider to be quite significant omission since almost every other phone these days does, and MP3's take up much less space then wav files. When any kind of ring-tone is played on the loudest you can hear that the speaker was not built for that kind of volume as it produces some kind of cracking noise throughout a song or a tone. On occasion this phone manages to freeze up and sometimes takes a little longer to return to the main menu when interrupted while dialling a number. When it freezes it is necessary to remove the battery completely as it will not turn off by pressing the on/off bottom. I purchased this phone for $200 CND. It is unlocked and therefore can be used with the majority of providers. I am using it with Fido but have it used in Europe over the summer (not sure about the provider any more). It is a great business and travel phone since it comes with features like an Emergency Phonebook that contains list of countries with their emergency phone numbers, Time-zone settings, appointment organizer, task organizer, and the two I like the most are the dictating machine (recorder) and of course the Cocktail Manager which contains recipes and mixing instructions for creating tasteful drinks :P. Overall for the price I paid I think this is a great phone.

This is surely the best phone that Siemens have produced. I hope that BenQ take note.

The S65 is a wonderful mobile phone. The programmes are useful and easy to use. I especially like the Phonebook and Address book being separate.

The keys, though small, are easy to use for texting. Also, the text font can be made larger, which is really useful, so there is no need to wear my glasses for texting.

Well, actually I prefer the Siemens S700i mobile phone rather than the S65.

The S700i has:

- Larger Screen Display

- MP3/MPEG4 Player

- FM Radio

- Flash Light

- Nice Looking, and Stylish

- Nice Connectivity

- Support MP3 Ringtones

That's all...

The camara on the Siemens S65 is very nice during the day time, but it's really bad in the dark time, as is the battery too. It has such a short life. I sold it after I use it for 3 days. I've been using a Nokia phone since 2000 and I was thinking to change to S65. But too bad. S65 is not a good phone. Don't buy it!

The keys on the Siemens S65 are too small and appear to be weak.

Also the battery needs a lot of charging.

In a few words, the Siemens S65 phone is not worth its money. For the main reason that the image quality of the photos on the screen is terrible compared to that of phones half the price. You can have all the megapixels you want, but the resolution of the screen itself is very low compared to its competitors. So the benefits of 1.3 MP are completely lost on this screen. If you want to enjoy a photo, the only way to do it is to dowload it! Forget enjoying it on the phone. Then it has these huge volume buttons on the side of the phone that you touch practically every time you pick up the phone. It makes handling the phone a nightmare. The only way to resolve is with a cover. I had an old Siemens S25 and found the volume buttons much better. Finally, the background light goes off much too quickly. Once it is off, you can't see anything. To switch it back on, you need to start some function. It would have been much more intelligent to have a light button.

For the money you pay, you expect much more from this phone.

The S65 is a very elegant and serious looking phone. Unlike most Siemens phones, I was surprised when I first took it in my hand, at how solid it actually felt and looked. The feel is certainly not plasitc and cheap.

The general features are okay, the menu is easy to access and use, and the options are sorted in a more or less logical way. The fact you get a 32MB memory card with it is brilliant. I'm only a little disappointed that a data cable was not included (as my comp doesn't do IRda). You do however get a CD rom telling you that you can buy it additionally. Great. Thanks.

Apparently, you can also buy an adidtional flashlight. I haven't checked if it is actually available in the shops, but the option is good to have I guess.

I have to say though, I was horribly disapointed with the picture quality. The photos, although very large (1.3 megapixles) come out with such low saturation, some of them look almost black and white. They are also very badly focused, and to be honest, they don't really look like 1.3 megapixle photos to me. They look more like small photos artificially blown up to 1280x960 pixles. And I can do that in photoshop. Not impressed. It's really a waste, considering the fact the phone is advertised with its mighty camera being like the most important feature.

Also, the keys are very tiny, and while typing a message it is very easy to accidentally press the button for internet. Which can be VERY annoying. Luckily, the phone saves the message and allows you to carry on typing it once you turn off the internet browser.

My advice would be - if you want an expensive and stylish looking phone, get this one, it turns heads. If you want good photos, avoid it, don't let the 1.3 megapixles attract you, they're useless if the photo is blurry and colourless.

I decided to upgrade from my Nokia 6600 to the Siemens S65. I have been loyal to Nokia since 1998, but was iritated by the number of bugs with my 6600, so decided it was time for a change.

The S65 is a "candy bar" style handset. Personally I think this is a great looking phone.

You can assign number keys 2 to 9 to a specific shortcut. Press and hold to access the shortcut. Key 1 is reserved for voicemail access, and pressing and holding key 0 brings up a list of countries. You select the country you want to call and it inserts a + followed by the country calling code.

The softkeys and joystick are also used for shortcuts, together with the volume keys on the right hand side of the phone. The manual states the volume keys have 4 shortcuts assigned to them - 1 shortcut accessible on a short press of the key and the other accessible by a long press for each key. However I find that a short press on the "-" volume key does absolutely nothing, not to worry.

A long press of the star key quickly toggles between silent and normal mode while a long press of the hash key turns the key guard on and off.

So many shortcut keys makes virtually everything I use on the phone accessible at the touch of a button.

Operating System

The handset uses a Symbian operating system, and you can purchase additional third party software. The operating system is very fast. I have had the phone for 6 weeks now and it has (only) crashed twice. The menu system is icon driven. Nice not to over-the-top icons with a logical structure.

Additional Features

The phone has an easy to use calendar, which sychs with iCal on my Mac using iSynch. It also has a Notes list and To-Do list which I find useful.

On the rear of the phone as well as the camera you have a socket for inserting an external antenna, should you decide to use the phone with a fully installed car kit.

WAP

The handset uses the Openwave browser for WAP, which can also handle standard web pages to. While I find the browser satisfactory, it is not as good as the Opera browser for Symbian handsets, which scales web pages so they fit nicely on the display and are readable too.

Bluetooth

I have had no problems using Bluetooth. It happily connects to my Mac, and handles a Bluetooth connection to my Plantronics M1000 headset far better than my previous phone. The phone also still rings when it is paired to a headset, unlike the 6600, so I no longer miss calls! If the phone is paired to a headset and you receive a call, you can answer the call on your phone and then use the phone for the conversation, or you can answer the phone via your headset, and use your headset for the conversation. You can also easily swop from headset to phone and vice-versa during a call at the touch of a button. A shame Nokia don't make it all so easy.

Call Quality

Call quality is very good, still clear on maximum volume. There is a built-in speaker phone, which does sound a little tinny but is bearable.

Camera

The camera has 1.3 megapixels, which was the big selling point for me. The camera has a 5-stage digital zoom, and also allows you to adjust the light balance. I have taken photographs and transferred them to my Mac. While the detail in the photos is as I expected, I find that the photos can lack colour. Adjusting the light balance improves the picture quality in low-light conditions but the picture quality is still not as good as on my 6600 for these type of shots. The camera also has the ability to record video (sound is captured via the microphone as well). You can change the resolution of the photos you take so that you can maximise the quantity stored. Overall I would say the camera is of average quality.

Address Book

Very good. There are loads of fields to store names numbers and addresses plus extra info such as fax numbers, office numbers, instant message names, pager number etc. You can also assign contacts to specific groups and add a picture to a contact. You can then set the phone to only ring if the caller belongs to a specific group etc. If you have assigned an image to a contact this is displayed when they call you. All very user-friendly.

Messaging

SMS is easy to use, T9 predictive text is supported. All outgoing SMS are saved in a folder, plus a tally is kept on the number of texts sent. Good if you are a text addict worried about the size of your bill!

Again MMS is just as easy to use. I do find the keypad a bit fiddly to use, I think that the keys could protrude a bit more to make it easier to type as the keys are very close together.

I have set my phone up to retrieve my email via POP. Not the best email client though. Downloaded emails are kept on the server - you cannot change it so that they are automatically deleted once you have downloaded or downloaded and deleted from the phone. You can go into each message individually and choose to delete on the server - the phone then connects to your inbox and deletes the message. A bit of a pain though as you have to do this individually for each message, which can take a while when you have lots of emails to delete! No IMAP or Blackberry support, but this does not bother me. The phone will display any JPGs attached to emails, unlike some other phones.

Display

A big TFT LCD 60-odd thousand colour display. This gives a bright, crisp display even in the sunniest of lighting conditions. Great for reviewing your photos/videos on. You do have the option of adjusting the brightness.

Battery Life

Lithium-Ion battery supplied as standard. I use my phone for about 60 mins per day, 20 - 30 mins of this on the phone. I find that it can get me through 2 full days before needing a recharge, enough for me.

Memory

The phone comes with a 32Mb reduced sized MMC. Plenty of room for storing hundreds photos, even at the highest resolution. The card is hot-swoppable, you insert it in the bottom of the phone via the charging slot.

Annoyances

A few other things I have not covered already that do not please me. The phone seems to have confirmation prompts for everything, for example you turn the phone on and you get a confirmation prompt asking you to confirm switch on!

The phone does not support voice activated dialling. This seems to be an omission as previous Siemens models do support it and you would expect this from a high-spech phone.

When you take a photo the phone emits a very loud camera click noise, even if the phone is on silent mode. I find this irritating and unnecessary.

The phone has a recorder but you cannot use this when on a call, which is a shame. Apparently this is only on models destined for the UK due to issues around the legality of recording phone conversations!!! I think I will by an import next time round!

Other stuff

Ringtones - I just use ring ring. You can download more if this is your cup-of-tea. Again you can download screensavers, wallpapers and themes etc. but that is not really for me.

Alarm - you can set it to come on only on certain days of the week, so you don't get rudely awoken at the weekend. Also has a snooze option - very handy. I use it as my only alarm clock.

Games - a few included. One is a racing car game which seems quite good. Again I am not a gamer so don't know much about this area.

what is the point of having a bluetooth enabled phone without it having voice-dialling ability? Also the battery-life of the Siemens S65 is poor, or even worse than poor!

Wanted to love my new Siemens S65 but after a few weeks of trying I decided I don't like it as much as my old phone. Annoyances are as follows:-

The background light goes off quickly.

There is no short-cut way to light the phone by pressing the volume button for example. You have to press the unlock key as far as I can tell which you can't see in the dark anyway very easily. The standby mode only shows the time and not the date. The keys are small even for my tiny fingers and I frequently spell words wrongly. The keys appear to be quite tacky and fear they would break if dropped. The ring quality is diabolical. It is very tinny and doesn't compare at all to my last phone (Samsung T100). I set up an automatic phone lock (5 minutes) and can't work out how to turn it off so have to put in a code after 5 minutes of non-use. Maybe my problem which is easily solvable? It seems to save all sent texts which I don't want it to do in case someone reads them. Haven't worked out how to turn it off. Booklet isn't easy to understand it rather assumes a good understanding of Bluetooth, Infrareda and GPRS. Still don't know what GPRS is? Will it help me navigate in the dark? Don't think so. The alarm clock has only a 5 minute snooze. What use is that? I want at least a 10 minute snooze button. Good points are:

It has all the latest trendy gadgets even if I don't use them. I like the phone lock which is why I chose a Siemens but I can't work out how to turn it off. I can use it as a torch in the dark providing I can find the unlock key as it appears that the light stays on until the phone unlock code has been entered. The screen is clear and would be even clearer if I removed the packaging film. Sound reception is good. It's quite smart looking. Classic and not brash. What else? I prefer my old phone and may ask for it back off my relative.